In the End There Was You
by mille libri
Summary: Hawke returns to Kirkwall from Weisshaupt, looking for Fenris.


_This was written as a thank you to Blindluck92, who was the 500th reviewer on my story, A Candle in the Darkness. Thank you! I hope you enjoy it! (No Trespasser spoilers.)  
_

* * *

The line of people waiting for the gates of Kirkwall to open was long, as always; farmers bringing in their wares to sell in the markets, merchant caravans trying to get the jump on their competitors. Not too many travelers at this hour of the morning; most of them would have pushed to get in last night, or stopped for the night at an inn on the way and would come in later in the morning.

Lucy Hawke hadn't wanted to show her face at an inn so close to home, however, and she had walked all night to get here as soon as possible. Perhaps she wouldn't be able to rest even inside these familiar walls, but certainly it had to be better than sleeping out, alone, unable to close her eyes without seeing visions of what she had left behind.

What impulse had taken her to Weisshaupt, anyway? Everyone had told her not to go. Varric had talked a blue streak trying to convince her, the Inquisitor had offered her any role in the organization she wanted, and Fenris … she could still remember the argument they had had the night before she left to join Stroud.

How long ago had that been now? Years. Somewhere along the way she had lost track of the passage of time.

It was easy to do at Weisshaupt, in the middle of the long barren plains where nothing changed but the direction the wind blew. The Wardens reckoned time only by their nightmares, lost to everything going on outside their fortress.

Well, they were lost for good now. Lucy shook her head violently to clear it of the memories. She had made her escape almost too late, saved only by the fact that she had never agreed to become a Warden, never gone through the Joining. But she had seen … seen everything, stumbling over the bodies on her way out.

All she could think of, once she had finally left Weisshaupt far enough behind her that she was sure of not being pursued, once she had crossed into Tevinter and begun to see green growing things again, to hear birds and feel the sun warm on her face, was to find Fenris. To hope that in his arms she might be able to close her eyes and rest, to find the security and haven she sought.

If he would take her back, after she had left him behind. He had sworn to let nothing part them, but she had parted them, had left him at home because she was too much of a coward to put him in danger again.

Hawke had hunted for him throughout Tevinter, spending her energy and whatever coin she could scrounge searching for any hints of magisters killed by mysterious means, slavers taken out by some savage force, but the rumors were all distant, far in the past, as if he had been here once but was no longer. At last what trail there had been had grown cold. Left without a clue as to where he could have gone—sickeningly afraid that something had caught up to him at last, killing him or, worse, returning him to slavery—she decided to return to Kirkwall, on the off chance that perhaps he was there.

As she made her way south, she heard the rumors. So much had changed—the closing of the Breach, the dismantling of the Inquisition, the disappearance of the Inquisitor—but at the same time, nothing had really changed. The same complaints, the same frustrations, the same … people, really. Hawke wasn't sure if she found that sad or reassuring.

What she was sure of was that she wasn't ready to be part of it all again. Not yet. After her experiences in Weisshaupt, she didn't even know who she was anymore.

In order to avoid being recognized, she had increasingly taken to traveling parallel with the road rather than on it. She was planning to use an assumed name, that of one of the Wardens who was no longer going to be needing it, to get into Kirkwall. Varric was Viscount of Kirkwall now, which surprised her not at all—it had always been only a matter of time before he was caught and stuck on that particular pike. But Lucy didn't want to see Varric; or Aveline, who was still here leading the city guards. Or Merrill, who was no doubt still in the alienage somewhere.

All she wanted was Fenris, and as she made her way through the gates and up the long stairs toward Hightown, she prayed to a Maker who probably didn't exist that Fenris would somehow magically be there, because she didn't know what she would do if he wasn't.

* * *

Fenris kicked a piece of debris into the fireplace. He had been surprised to return to Kirkwall and find the mansion in exactly the condition he had left it in, only with more dust. Someone had finally come in and removed the decaying bodies that had been left in the foyer, and he had to admit it smelled marginally better now.

He lifted the wine bottle to his lips. The last bottle of the Pavalli, also still miraculously right where he had left it. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine that it was still the 'good old days', as Varric termed them, and that any minute now Hawke would be walking through the door, her brown eyes merry from the latest set of witticisms she had traded with one of their companions.

If he concentrated, he could remember the exact shade of those brown eyes, and the tiny braid at his waist was her soft, lustrous brown. He remembered when she had given him that braid, the day she left to join Stroud. 'To remember her by', she had said, and how that had stung. As if, having lost so much from his memory, he could stomach the idea of losing more, of losing any tiny piece of her from his mind's eye. Perhaps that was why he had reacted so strongly to the idea of her going off without him. He had shouted at her, he had sulked, he had tried to insist that she allow him to accompany her, and when all that had failed, he had left her with an ultimatum—him, or this work with Stroud.

And she had left. Without him. Leaving his heart in pieces on the floor, just another piece of debris.

Fenris had lost himself in vengeance, drowning his sorrows in the blood of slavers and magisters, laughing as they breathed their last with his fist closed around their hearts. But even that had begun to pall eventually—without her, what value was the life he was putting so much effort into avenging?

He had gone north, to the border between Tevinter and the Anderfels, had tried to get through to Weisshaupt, but the roads were closed, barricaded, nothing in or out. Part of him, the part that was nearly mindless with fear, knowing that his Hawke was somewhere there behind that barricade, wanted to storm it, to deal with whatever he found there, to go in there and drag her out whether she wanted to come or not. But the more rational part of him had known he would need more than just himself if he wanted to storm Weisshaupt Fortress, and he had come home to Kirkwall to plead with Varric to use his position as Viscount of Kirkwall and his influence with what remained of the Inquisition to help him recover Hawke.

Of course, it was not going to be as simple as that, and Fenris wished he had chosen someone even less scrupulous than Varric to approach. The dwarf was taking his responsibilities to Kirkwall far more seriously than Fenris had ever imagined he might. Which, under other circumstances, Fenris might have admired.

Today, however … Fenris turned and hurled the wine bottle at the wall, taking some measure of grim satisfaction at the way it shattered.

And then a voice came from the doorway, a voice from his very dreams. "It's nice to see some things never change. But at least you finally got rid of the bodies in the entry."

"Hawke?" He stared at her. "Hawke?"

"I think so." A faint smile crossed her face. It was thinner than he remembered, the hollows of her cheeks more pronounced, dark shadows under her brown eyes, but it was still the most beautiful face he had ever seen. "Sometimes I've had my doubts."

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what had happened to her, but there was something in her eyes that said now was not the time, if there would ever be one. Instead, he stepped toward her, carefully, as though she might disappear if he moved too quickly.

"I'm sorry, Fenris. You were right; I shouldn't have gone."

"Or you should have taken me with you."

"No." There was steel under her voice.

He stopped in front of her, raising trembling fingers to her face. Hawke leaned into his touch, her eyes closing. "Whatever may have occurred, you are here now, and that is all that matters."

"Is it?"

"Yes. Everything that matters," Fenris assured her. His free hand slid around her waist, gently pulling her closer to him.

Her lips parted as she looked up at him, and he claimed them, tentatively at first and then hungrily, all the remembered tastes and textures flooding his mind as he held her there against him. Hawke returned the kiss eagerly. Then she pulled away, looking at him with some concern.

"Are you sure?"

"Of this? Always."

With a sigh of relief, she leaned against him, worn out from her long journey. "Take me away somewhere, Fenris. Anywhere."

He smiled. "It will be my very great pleasure."

"Good." Her fingers slid into his hair, bringing his mouth to hers again. "Tomorrow."


End file.
